Remote Access to devices.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, Alway Swilby said:

They are sitting on the swim close to the engine bay vent. The vent is facing north so there will be a bit of a breeze through there. I blame Ricky, he put them there 😀

 

Are they just bare batteries, or are they inside a plywood box like mine?

 

While the boat was being designed and built I did have some concerns about how cold they'd get and whether the BMS low-temperature limit would kick in, but not any more... 🙂

[Alway Swilby]

1 minute ago, IanD said:

 

Are they just bare batteries, or are they inside a plywood box like mine?

 

While the boat was being designed and built I did have some concerns about how cold they'd get and whether the BMS low-temperature limit would kick in, but not any more... 🙂

They are just bare batteries sitting on the swim. It's not too much of a problem while we are not there. The Multiplus and the mppt are both programmed not to charge if the temp is at or below zero. If we were there and wanted to start the engine then I would worry about the alternator putting out many amps. But that situation has never happened in seven years.

Our batteries were the first lithiums that Finesse fitted, they are manufactured by ReLion and the BMS is not very good. I don't have access to the settings and I don't think Finesse did either. They are now about eight years old and one of the three has died. I am going to replace them with two self heating batteries from LiFe Batteries and get about three times the Ah (460) compared to the old ones.

[GUMPY]

Useful guide if you want to go down the Victron route.

Won't work for me as battery is not. Victron and the mains charger doesn't have VE Bus

 

 

[cheesegas]

9 hours ago, GUMPY said:

Useful guide if you want to go down the Victron route.

Won't work for me as battery is not. Victron and the mains charger doesn't have VE Bus

VenusOS on Pi works very well but isn't very cost effective if you have a lot of MPPTs. £50 for a Pi, £10 for a case, £10 for a 5v regulator, £60 for two ve.direct to USB (one for the MPPT, one for the battery gauge), £60 for a ve.bus to USB and you're already almost at the cost of a Cerbo GX! There are cheaper DIY options for ve.direct cables but they lack the galvanic isolation of the Victron ones. You also get two inputs and two outputs of GPIO with the Cerbo which is really handy! 

 

It is however a good cheap way to get rudimentary remote monitoring with just a single ve.direct cable for the battery gauge.

Edited February 14 by cheesegas

[GUMPY]

At present i'm sticking with TeamViewer and my mobile phone as it does what I need.

I have today enabled the WiFi hotspot on the phone so it will connect to the Sonoff devices I have to switch the mains charger on and to read the overall 230v power consumption of the van when it's on EHU.

 

More to come

 

 

[jonathanA]

i've been using team viewer to access my victron solar controller and i can see that with my who are we router left running (direct on 12v) and a 12v/usb to supply my android phone even as this time of year my solar is keeping the batteries topped up despite the approx 24AH/day used by the router.  (no shoreline)

 

I like the idea of using sonoff (use them at home a lot). I can use teamviewer to turn on/off ewelink camera function on my phone. I'll probably look for a better 12v/local memory cctv camera now I've proved that leaving the router on is viable. 

sonoff do some 12v power wi-fi switches ( 4 channel) with 'dry' relay contacts could be very useful for switching on/off anything on the boat remotely. although wouldnt need teamviewer to do that of course. 

 

the point is all this is for nothing. the sonoff stuff is dirt cheap. (IMO)

Edited February 15 by jonathanA
sp

[GUMPY]

1 hour ago, jonathanA said:

sonoff do some 12v power wi-fi switches ( 4 channel) with 'dry' relay contacts could be very useful for switching on/off anything on the boat remotely

I will have to look into this, could be useful.

[jonathanA]

5 hours ago, GUMPY said:

I will have to look into this, could be useful.

one of these or something similiar:

 (they are not well protected against reverse polarity DAMHIK)

Edited February 15 by jonathanA
polarity warning

[GUMPY]

As an update to this I have ditched the phone as it wasn't allowing a restart of TeamViewer Host without  manual intervention and got an old Huawei T3 7" tablet with a SIM slot to replace the phone. It now doesn't need local input after a restart. TeamViewer Host now runs after a reboot using Start Up
I have also enabled location sharing on the caravan account so I get location info on my phone. 🤔

[blackrose]

I don't do remote monitoring. I'm more of a traditionalist. 😋

[GUMPY]

23 minutes ago, blackrose said:

I don't do remote monitoring. I'm more of a traditionalist. 😋

If you did remote monitoring then when you are hanging out in the far east you could see that your charger has failed and your LA batteries had discharged past the resuscitation point 🤪

[blackrose]

10 hours ago, GUMPY said:

If you did remote monitoring then when you are hanging out in the far east you could see that your charger has failed and your LA batteries had discharged past the resuscitation point 🤪

 

And there would be f@ck awll I could do about it! I'd really rather not know. 😌

[Liam]

19 hours ago, GUMPY said:

As an update to this I have ditched the phone as it wasn't allowing a restart of TeamViewer Host without  manual intervention and got an old Huawei T3 7" tablet with a SIM slot to replace the phone. It now doesn't need local input after a restart. TeamViewer Host now runs after a reboot using Start Up
I have also enabled location sharing on the caravan account so I get location info on my phone. 🤔

How did you go on with this using Three? Along with many other providers, Three use Carrier Grade NAT which means your donlge/device doesn't actually have a public IP address, and so port forwarding etc will not work over the Internet.

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Liam said:

How did you go on with this using Three? Along with many other providers, Three use Carrier Grade NAT which means your donlge/device doesn't actually have a public IP address, and so port forwarding etc will not work over the Internet.

If you use the 3internet APN then Three are (probably?) the only CGNAT-free carrier, so port forwarding should work -- three.co.uk uses CGNAT, as do all the MVNOs who piggyback on Three...

Edited February 26 by IanD

[GUMPY]

Worked fine on Smarty (3) but I've had to migrate to EE as the tablet is locked to EE and their unlock code doesn't work.😟

It works fine on EE as well, I have a spare EE  SIM with 20gb left on and I'm using about 0.1gb a day even with extensive testing so that will last a while😉

 

 

[Liam]

1 hour ago, IanD said:

If you use the 3internet APN then Three are (probably?) the only CGNAT-free carrier, so port forwarding should work -- three.co.uk uses CGNAT, as do all the MVNOs who piggyback on Three...

I've been playing with this recently...

 

We've got CCTV set up over the yard, and with dynamic DNS and port forwarding could access the cameras whilst out and about. Absolutely no problem for the past couple of years... however recently after a MIFI router restart, the CCTV refused to connect whilst I was away on a fuel run.

 

When I got back I realised that the routers public IP address was actually an internal IP. This was when the APN was "3internet". Had a quick Google about the problem and when I changed to "three.co.uk" it still didn't work but interestingly, any all of the DDNS, Port Forwarding etc settings were unavailable. I changed back to "3internet" and whilst the settings were accessible again, the external IP was still a CGNAT'd internal IP.

 

Very frustrating! Three must have recently changed their settings across the board.

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Liam said:

I've been playing with this recently...

 

We've got CCTV set up over the yard, and with dynamic DNS and port forwarding could access the cameras whilst out and about. Absolutely no problem for the past couple of years... however recently after a MIFI router restart, the CCTV refused to connect whilst I was away on a fuel run.

 

When I got back I realised that the routers public IP address was actually an internal IP. This was when the APN was "3internet". Had a quick Google about the problem and when I changed to "three.co.uk" it still didn't work but interestingly, any all of the DDNS, Port Forwarding etc settings were unavailable. I changed back to "3internet" and whilst the settings were accessible again, the external IP was still a CGNAT'd internal IP.

 

Very frustrating! Three must have recently changed their settings across the board.

Nope, definitely not...

 

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/has-3internet-apn-on-three-switched-to-cgnat.41334/#post-347891

Edited February 26 by IanD

[Liam]

39 minutes ago, IanD said:

Nope, definitely not...

 

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/has-3internet-apn-on-three-switched-to-cgnat.41334/#post-347891

Thanks for the link, it made me double check the routers settings and somehow I'd left it on three.co.uk. I've just changed it back to 3internet and pop! Public IP address was assigned... and I can get on the CCTV cameras again using my ddns name. I'm sure I tried it repeatedly the other day with no luck but hey ho. Thanks again and apologies for hijacking the thread 😊

[IanD]

18 minutes ago, Liam said:

Thanks for the link, it made me double check the routers settings and somehow I'd left it on three.co.uk. I've just changed it back to 3internet and pop! Public IP address was assigned... and I can get on the CCTV cameras again using my ddns name. I'm sure I tried it repeatedly the other day with no luck but hey ho. Thanks again and apologies for hijacking the thread 😊

It was me who just started the new thread there by asking the question -- there are quite a few knowledgeable people on that forum, it's a good place to ask any questions like yours... 😉

Edited February 26 by IanD

[GUMPY]

System has been up and running for a while now. Teamviewer flagged it as a commercial use which I have now got rescinded so have full access again.

One point to note is that on Android 10 remote access needs confirmation at the remote terminal😟

I am therefore running Android 7 which means I have to stay with Victron Connect V5 as V6 requires Android 8 or later.